THE DOUBLE HELIX A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by Watson James D - 1968

New York: Atheneum, 1968. First Edition. Illustrated throughout. 8vo, publisher’s original blue cloth lettered in blind on the upper cover and lettered in gilt on the spine, in the original dustjacket. xvi, 226, [8] pp. A very fine copy, pristine and close to mint, the spine panel of the jacket is not faded as is so often the case. A RARELY ENCOUNTERED VERY FINE COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE PERSONAL FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF ONE OF THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY. This is a most beautifully written book and is James Watson’s own account of the discovery of DNA and the very building-blocks of life. Watson, with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA in 1953 and for the discovery Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine. THE DOUBLE HELIX is one of the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction books, and one of only a handful of books of science to have had such a lasting and significant impact on the general public. The account is the sometimes painful story of not only the discovery of the structure of DNA, but of the personalities, conflicts and controversy surrounding their work. Watson thought originally to name the book "Honest Jim", as it recounts the discovery of the double helix from his own point of view and includes many of his private and emotional impressions.
At the age of 24, he wrote from Cambridge to a friend in the States one month before the public announcement in April, 1953: "It is a strange model and embodies several unusual features. However, since DNA is an unusual substance, we are not hesitant in being bold." Immediately it was heralded as the most significant discovery since Mendel's and was recognized with great tribute as the molecule of heredity, and to know its structure and method of reproduction enabled sicence to know how genetic directions are written and transmitted, and how the form of life are ordered from one generation to the next.
Watson and Crick, along with Wilkins had worked together almost a decade earlier, and now merged data from chemistry, physics, and biology to solve the structure of DNA--Watson and Crick on the building of a hypothetical model that would conform in all its parts to what Wilkins' X-ray pictures had already shown of the molecule. The interplay of ideas, temperaments, and circumstances was an especially fortuitous one, since the result was something that, in Watson's words, was too pretty not to be true: the double helix.
Watson writes of how the work went along and also of the general creative process. The book is panoramic, the story of a young American scientist who saw the challenge of a great discovery waiting to be made, and the way he was caught up in the very air of Cambridge and the minds it nurtured. And there was the personal side as well, the self-doubts and insecurities both social and science based, the competition, the theories, the people, the walks along the Backs of the colleges beside the River Cam, the English women to be puzzled by, the wines and the books and the politics. James Watson's book is not only a personal one, but an inviting one and a pleasure for the reader to enjoy.